Helping others to the extreme, that is. Folks, we've often heard the expression "there are no atheists in foxholes" repeated over and again to imply that, in the direst of situations, even the most recalcitrant soul gambles on the existence of a transcendent divine being and prays to him in one single, fear-induced, intuitive leap. This notion has had enough traction in popular culture that organized atheists have begun to complain and have been, in fact,
complaining for a while now that the oft used cliché is untrue and unrepresentative of the feelings of the vast majority of atheists.
Since I am feeling uncommonly generous today I will grant these longsuffering atheists the recognition they demand: yes, there are atheists in the foxholes. They arrive there as atheists and leave as atheists, perhaps even more so. I even grant that many arrive into the foxholes as religious believers and leave as atheists, even if militant atheists are either unwilling or unable to recognize that another significant segment of our servicemen and women who were atheists or agnostics at best, do in fact experience a religious reorientation, if not an outright conversion, while fighting in foxholes. From an empirical viewpoint we must recognize that the phenomena are too variegated to extract a meaningful generalization except this one: you take from the foxhole what you brought into it. And, to sweeten this pie of concessions, I also admit that the phenomenon extends to those serving in police, firefighting, and emergency services and other such humanitarian capacities whose members often have to face human evil first hand.
There are atheists in the foxholes and atheists who are endowed with perfectly ordinary morality living outside the foxholes. Fine, let's grant that and let's grant too that most of them are outstanding citizens who, in their behavior, are no better or worse than that of your average, nominal Christian.
Why be a Christian, then? That's a fair question. Let me attempt an answer.
What I fail to see in them—in atheists and nominal Christians alike—is a sense of morality so strong, so intense, and so overwhelming, that it drives them to extremes in tending to the needs of the dregs of society, those fellow human beings left behind by all our utilitarian calculations—their vague feelings of solidarity, impotence, and guilt notwithstanding.
No, that kind of drive to serve the downtrodden to the extreme does not come from human empathy alone. It comes from a Source outside of the self and only those who are attuned to this Source are able to transcend the demands of ordinary humanism into something larger and more glorious. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean:
It took a believer like Mother Theresa to serve the poorest of the poor, the dying even, on the streets of Calcutta and not an enlightened atheist. Not one atheist joined her at first and I don't know of any one now, though I know that there are no atheists among the nuns and brothers who continue her work today.
There were no atheists in the leprosarium of Molokai either, washing the oozing wounds of those confined therein during the 19th century, or outside of Assisi in the 13th during the so-called "Dark Ages" but it took a Fr. Damien and a Francis of Assisi to do that. But perhaps that's unfair, maybe because there were no atheists in Francis' time, but definitely there were plenty during Fr. Damien's time. Not one atheist joined him, though, probably because they didn't want to end up like Fr. Damien, dying himself of leprosy in the service of others.
Nor do we know of one single atheist volunteering to die in other's stead in a Nazi death camp, but Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, a darned believer, did so willingly and lovingly. The man Kolbe saved later attended the slain priest's canonization ceremony. He was not an atheist.
Dorothy Day, a non-canonized saint—her process is ongoing—is one with whom socially-minded atheists can relate to, but only up to a point. According to Jim Forest, she founded the Catholic Worker movement here in the U.S. back in 1933. The movement is best known for houses of hospitality located in run-down sections of many cities, though a number of Catholic Worker centers exist in rural areas. Food, clothing, shelter and welcome is extended by unpaid volunteers to those in need according to the ability of each household. Beyond hospitality, Catholic Worker communities are known for activity in support of labor unions, human rights, cooperatives, and the development of a nonviolent culture. Those active in the Catholic Worker are often pacifist people seeking to live an unarmed, nonviolent life. During periods of military conscription, Catholic Workers have been conscientious objectors to military service. Many of those active in the Catholic Worker movement have been jailed for acts of protest against racism, unfair labor practices, social injustice and war. But I say that she held none of these activities and labels as ends in themselves. Dorothy Day may have held a progressive attitude toward social and economic rights, but she did so with a very orthodox and traditional sense of Catholic morality and piety. Although she had written passionately about women’s rights, free love and birth control in the 1910s, she opposed the sexual revolution of the sixties, saying she had seen the ill effects of a similar sexual revolution in the 1920s, when she had an abortion (cfr. Dorothy Day's Wikipedia article). She had the courage to retract her earlier, very bad ideas as she beheld the outcome of such opinions late in her life. The final end of her activism was Man in God.
What did Blessed Mother Theresa, Sts. Damien of Molokai, Francis of Assisi, Maximilian Kolbe, and Dorothy Day had in common? Well, that they all believed in the crude superstition—"crude" in the eyes of the "bright" atheists— that an executed Jewish carpenter of 2,000 years ago—whose claims, and perhaps his very existence, are highly questionable—was the one and only incarnation of a bloodthirsty tribal desert deity who dared to preach human brotherhood and universal love at the cost of one's own life, having had the temerity to back this message with his own death.
This firm belief in the person, teachings, life, death, and resurrection of a certain Jesus of Nazareth drove these men and women to look at the most needy from among us, not as fortuitous products of a blind, undirected natural process, but as children of God. These holy people moved beyond any inherited or learned feelings of social solidarity and sympathy, choosing instead to see their neighbor as men and women endowed with an intrinsic, inalienable dignity transcending any selfish, "objectivist" calculus and utility, and worthy of a disinterested, even self-sacrificial love.
Really, what is the value, according to our culture, of helping a terminally ill AIDS victim in India and Africa, or a leper in a leper colony hidden in the armpits of the world, when these resources should be better spent in helping only those who have a chance to recover, or better still, for illness prevention? Our materialistic culture, imbued with secular values, impels us to write off the downtrodden in the quest of making the healthy and the sane more "happy" at the expense of the sick, the suffering, and even the unborn. It takes a religious believer to go to the extreme of ministering to those whom society has labeled as not worth the time saving, curing, and comforting.
The funny thing is that God—because there is a God—wants us to live and behave like Mother Theresa & Co. did. Mediocrity was never to be the standard of Christian living: heroism in the service of others was and is. Nominal Christians are just practical atheists, unable or uninterested in loving others as themselves. They need not apply for the label of "compassionate people."
All right, there are atheists in the foxholes. Let's all agree to that. But look into the nook and crannies where the poorest of the poor crawl in to die and you will see that it is highly unlikely you'll find one single atheist ministering to them, but you can be almost certain that you will find with them believers who love them unconditionally, often even sharing their bitter fates to the very end.
To soothe and cure the sick and the downtrodden of the world we need more, no less believers. Atheism will become much more convincing the day it can generate a Mother Theresa whole cloth from purely atheistic moral principles.
. You may read a short biography 
.jpg/350px-Giotto_-_Legend_of_St_Francis_-_-11-_-_St_Francis_before_the_Sultan_(Trial_by_Fire).jpg)
Posts
